News headlines in December 2010, page 4

Although domestic consumption of seafood is low, Ecuador has a large fishing fleet, and is home to the main port for tuna and white fish in the eastern Pacific.

As 2010 draws to a close, both the United States and the United Nations have reached out to one of the world’s most marginalised groups in society: indigenous peoples.

'The market is not going to resolve the environmental crisis,' says theologian and environmentalist Leonardo Boff, professor at Brazil's State University of Rio de Janeiro. The solution, he says, lies in ethics and in changing our relationship with nature.

Twenty years after independence, representation of women in senior government structures and in Parliament is declining in Namibia. According to the latest demographic survey results of August 2010, out of a population of around 2 million, women outnumber men 10:9. In 2001, the ratio was 94 males per 100 females.

Agriculture remains one of the most significant economic activities in Kenya. It accounts for over 24 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with an estimated 70 percent of total production coming from small scale farmers who typically have about 2-5 acres of land, depending on the region.

Researchers in China, the world’s leading provider of wind turbines and solar panels, are working toward making renewable energy cheaper, more efficient and a bigger part of the country’s power grid.

Thanks to a healthy cocktail of foreign aid and a pragmatic condom policy, one of South-east Asia’s poorest countries is well on course to meeting an international target aimed at reversing the spread of HIV and AIDS.

The construction of five hydroelectric dams in Peru as part of an energy deal with Brazil will do considerable damage to the environment, such as the destruction of nearly 1.5 million hectares of jungle over the next 20 years, according to an independent study.

Guatemala, it seems, is trying out a new image. As of this month, women are at the helm of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Comptroller General's Office, winning their posts on merit, in what local activists are calling an important step in women's access to political power -- though 'there is a long way to go.'

'I do politics every day, but partisan politics? No, thank you,' says Jane Ragoo, long-time trade unionist and social worker. She believes in working to bring about change in society and improve people’s lives but has no interest in clambering onto a truck to campaign for office.